Denny's 'Unearthly Toys' was awarded the esteemed Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection.
The acclaimed London-born poet Ned Denny will read from his debut collection Unearthly Toys (Carcanet Press, 2018) at NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House on November 1, beginning at 1 p.m. His appearance comes as part of the annual Tom Quinlan Lecture in Poetry to mark the annual Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection winner.
Denny’s Unearthly Toys intersperses original poems with “remakes” of work from the 19th century French poet Baudelaire, the Tang Dynasty poet Li Po, the German Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen, and others. Throughout his original work, “Politics are never far away: modern man’s severance from the earth, the sacred, and his own inner self has grave consequences.”
Unearthly Toys was awarded the esteemed Prize for First Full Collection by a committee including Nick Laird, chair of creative writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre; Edna Longley, critic and professor emeritus at Queen’s University Belfast; and Stephen Sexton, poet and lecturer at the Seamus Heaney Centre.
Now in its eighth year, the Tom Quinlan Lecture in Poetry has annually presented the winners of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry’s prize. In fact, Heaney inaugurated the very first lecture to endorse the importance of a poet’s first published book. Previous guests have included Richard Osmond, Tara Bergin, and Katharine Towers among others. The series is named after Tom Quinlan, who also reads at the event, in honor of his nearly 70 years as a poetry teacher and scholar.
The event is free, and will be held at Glucksman Ireland House at NYU (1 Washington Mews), but registration is required. Please visit here for more details. [Subways: R, W (8th Street); 6 (Astor Place); A, B, C, D, E, F, M (West 4th Street).]
The Tom Quinlan Lecture in Poetry is presented in association with Irish Art Center’s PoetryFest which is curated by Nick Laird.
About the Glucksman Ireland House
Located in the heart of New York's Greenwich Village, Glucksman Ireland House, NYU is the center for Irish and Irish-American Studies at New York University. For the New York community, we present a weekly public events series during the academic year, as well as a monthly traditional Irish music series. For the non-credit adult learner, we host evening Irish language classes. We also serve as a resource center for Irish, Irish-American, and Irish diasporic culture. Our mission at Glucksman Ireland House is to foster excellence in the study of Ireland, Irish America and the Irish Diaspora in New York and the global communities.